Overlooking the value of art in the study of history is a common mistake. While history often focuses on objective investigation, art has the power to inject emotion and beauty from the present into the past, providing an essential dimension to historical events. The Usual Suspects, an exhibition of former Oberlin professor Jean Kondo Weigl, is a prime example of this infusion of bland historical facts with passion and humanity. The exhibit, which opened in the Baron Gallery in Dewy Ward ’34 Alumni Center on May 2, runs through May 16.
The exhibition is thematically two-fold. One series of paintings is a clear depiction of American history with various references to indigenous American peoples and their culture....

The disorder of the jungle might seem an unorthodox pairing with the hyper-controlled technique necessary for aerial, but the combination worked wonders in the Circus Safari show held in Hales Gymnasium last Friday evening. The show, in which performers costumed themselves as a separate jungle animal that they then embodied during their routines, was hosted by College first-year Zoe Beach and College senior Rachel Webberman with the support of Oberlin College Aerialists. It made for an entertaining spectacl...

Composer, cultural producer and musician Nick Hallett, OC ’97, couldn’t stay away from Oberlin for too long. On Tuesday, April 29, he delivered a talk titled “The Impossible Convention: Hybrid Music-Art Practices in Gotham and Beyond,” which was sponsored by the Alumni Association and the Ellen Johnson Fund. Hallett described his art-making journey since his time as a double-degree student majoring in Linguistics and Vocal Performance at Oberlin.
Professor of Integrated Media Julia Christensen introduced Hallett to the group of College and Conservatory students. Throughout the spring semester, the Art department has invited manyOberlin alumni who currently work as artists to come speak to students who are...

If the Computer Science Community Art Show were to be described in one word, that word would silently be pulled from the brain by a headset, fed into a seismograph and read as a beautiful array of colored lines. Although the featured artists at the event held on April 26 in Harkness House’s basement were not typical visual or performanceartists, the Computer Science department’s offerings were diverse and impressive enough to rival and perhaps trump Oberlin’s Studio Arts program. While made...

Last Thursday, multimedia exhibition Safe+Sound went on display in the Tappan Square bandstand to raise awareness of sexualized violence in the Oberlin community. The day before the exhibition, the Review spoke with the event’s organizers, College sophomore Tinni Bhattacharyya and College junior Sophie Hess about the process of putting the exhibition together and how they hope to accomplish their goal.
What is the origin of Safe+Sound?
Tinni Bhattacharyya: The project started because both of u...

Who says that fashion is always vain? Models sporting College sophomore Sophie Umazi Mvurya’s fashion collection, titled “Umazi,” strutted down the catwalk last Friday and Saturday at Runway Through Africa; between the two sold-out shows, the event raised $757 for the Yakubu Saaka Scholarship Fund, which aims to fully cover the Oberlin College tuition of an African student. The show, sponsored by the African Student Association, Abusua and Students of Caribbean Ancestry, also succeeded artist...

A visitor to the Clarence Ward Art Library will be intrigued by colorful signs and a table of free prizes like miniature magnifying glasses and fortuneteller fish, but, if one visits before May 31, attention might instead alight on an exciting, albeit tiny, new exhibit on display. The exhibit, titled <3” (three inches or less) handcrafted miniature books, features four display cases full of skillfully crafted miniature books, each less than three inches long.
Each book is a true work of ar...

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the written word’s impact on visual art is rarely considered, much less the idea of bookmaking itself as a form of visual art. Though last Friday afternoon was brisk, a fair number of students, faculty and community members braved the cold to satisfy their curiosity on this subject at the Books in Art event at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Liliana Milkova, the Allen’s curator of academic prgrams, organized the event with College sophomore Jesse Gamoran. Gamoran is the student coordinator of the Oberlin College Student Friends of the Library, the on-campus organization that also sponsored the event. SFOL aims to engage students with all of the libraries...

Anyone who’s taken a drawing class has likely heard the instruction, “Draw what you see.” But how does one draw what one can’t see? As an exploration of this topic, the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s Curator of European and American Art Andaleeb Banta has put together a collection of prints that depict various elements of the fantastic titled Between Fact and Fantasy.
Banta joined the Allen this past July, after working at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where ...

South Dome Studios played host to a new kind of arts event last weekend, as 10 student artists displayed their work in Oberlin’s first alternative poster sale.
“Selling art wasn’t the activity that I thought I would be getting myself into,” said College senior and co-organizer of the poster sale Tom Kearney. “There’s just certain parts of fine art that bother me, and one of those is that it’s very expensive.”
The relationship between money and art is interesting to Kearney, who came up with the idea for the alternative poster sale after going to the College’s annual poster sale held in Wilder Bowl.
“I was inspired in a certain way,” he said, recalling the event. “I went last year and...

In mid-September, what was ostensibly Playboy’s annual list of the top party schools surfaced online — only this time, their message was a bit different. Instead of ranking colleges based on their propensity for binge drinking and general licentiousness, Playboy’s list gave top honors to those schools that worked to promote awareness of sexualized violence and consent on campus. Assumed to be authentic, the list garnered significant attention online, as articles published by sites like the Huffington Post, Upworthy and BroBible all praised the typically illicit publication for taking a moral stance on the issue.
So when it was revealed that, in fact, a team of activists from Baltimore had published the list u...

A cult leader cleansing the energy of Fisher Gallery with sage, an ominous cutout representation of gender neutrality and a striking series of nude self-portraits were among the spectacles to behold at this year’s Senior Studio Half-Time Show. On an evening when campus was teeming with student art events, the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s courtyard buzzed with excitement surrounding the nearby exhibition.
The show was part of the Senior Studio capstone seminar, a newly required program for all...